In April, when the weather turned warmer (not warm; God! Scotland must have been the coldest country in the world), I took to walking in the woods with a hunting rifle in the crook of my arm. Not that I was out for any particular game, but I wouid take a pot shot at a scampering squirrel or rabbit just to practice my aim. One morning I wandered farther afield than usual. The trees, mostly conifer, pine, and larch, were still dripping from a predawn shower, plunking droplets on my battered felt hat. Underfoot, the puddled path, spongy with pine needles, squished and sucked at my boots. Coming to a torrential stream I crossed it with the aid of widely spaced, slippery stepping stones. Once on the other side, I climbed the muddy embankment and entered the woods again. I had gone a quarter of a mile perhaps when I came upon a small clearing. Here among the seared grasses of bygone summers stood seven large polished stones. Arranged in a crude semicircle, a miniature Stonehenge, they rose gaunt and mute and mysterious beneath the gray mackerel sky.
I stood contemplating them, wondering what sort of people had put them up thousands of years ago. Suddenly from behind me I heard a faint snapping sound: someone or something had stepped on a twig. It could have been a forest creature, a hare or a pine marten, but a sixth sense told me it was not. I moved swiftly across the clearing and disappeared behind the overhanging branches of a larch. Unslinging my gun, I peered around the tree trunk. Nothing. Silence. Dripping water, the rustle of wings as a blackbird sailed over the clearing to alight on one of the stones. Turning, I went on, walking carefully, my ears tuned to the slightest sound. The pines were taller here and the wind soughing through them gave a mournful cry. Out of the corner of an eye I caught a fleeting shadow. I dove for a stand of shrubs just as a shot rang out and carried my hat away.
Lying on the ground, my heart thumping, I waited. Again the silence was complete. My stalker, whoever he was, waited too. Minutes went by. From somewhere a wood pigeon spoke, its coooo-cooooo echoing in the silence. I shifted, peeping cautiously through the leaves. By now I was certain I had surprised a poacher, although I couldn’t understand why he continued to harass me instead of making a hasty retreat.
Another shot cracked through the forest, again narrowly missing me. I lifted my rifle and sent off an answering volley. I heard a cry, a thrashing sound. And then nothing.
Had I hit the man? Was it a ruse? I took my jacket off, gingerly placed it over the muzzle of my gun, and stuck it out over my head. Nothing happened. The silence was now profound; even the wind had stopped. I rose, nerves tensed, ready to duck. I listened a moment or two before hunching my shoulders and carefully making my way to the spot from where the cry had come.
He was on his hands and knees, crawling painfully toward his gun where he had apparently flung it when hit.
“Don’t!” I warned. “Don’t touch that gun or I’ll put a bullet through your skull and finish you off this time.”
He turned his head and gave me a malevolent look, then went on crawling.
I fired a shot over his head. He paused, then painfully maneuvered around, propping himself up against a tree trunk. He was bleeding through his trouser leg.
“Who the hell are you?” I asked angrily. I had never shot a man before.
“Who’d you think?” he asked venomously, his voice Scottish-burred. He was a red-haired man with a darker beard and cutting steel-blue eyes.
“You damn near killed me,” I said.
“Wish’t I had.”
I knelt down beside him, careful to put my rifle out of his reach. Untying the kerchief around my neck and rolling up his trouser leg, I tied the fabric loosely about his wound.
“You’d best run,” he said. “Ain’t nothin’ you can doo, goin’ to change me moind about puttin’ you in gaol.”
“Me in gaol? I should think it would be the other way round. Can you hobble?”
He looked up at me suspiciously. “Not with the looks of you.”
“You need help. Where’s the nearest house?”
“About a mile back.”
I got him to his feet. He was shorter than I, but sturdily built. “Lean on me if you want,” I said.
He took three independent hops and collapsed.
I hoisted him over my shoulder, picked up the two guns, and started off.
A misty rain was falling fast when I finally came to the cottage at the edge of the forest. Greeted by a brace of fierce dogs, I halloed until a woman appeared at the door. She shouted something over her shoulder, then hurried out to meet me.
“Gud God!”
We got the wounded man into the house and put him down gently on the box bed. It was not until the woman sent her son, a lad of twelve, for the doctor that I realized the man I had shot was not a poacher as I had supposed. He was a gamekeeper, the woman his wife.
I had unknowingly crossed over to our neighbor’s property and the gamekeeper had mistaken me for a poacher.
Lucky for me, the man did not die. As it was, it required all of Ian’s tact and persuasiveness to assure Lord William Douglas (the descendent of none other than the same Lord Willie who haunted Invernean) that it had been an honest mistake on my part. Lord Douglas accepted the apologies in addition to Ian’s offer to stand all medical expenses and to lend him one of his gamekeepers until the wounded one was well enough to resume his duties.
Needless to say, the entire episode did not endear me to Ian.
“The boundaries are clearly marked. A stone wall and stile on which the Douglas name and crest are whitewashed.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I must have missed it. But you can hardly blame me. I had no idea your property abutted another man’s.”
“Did you think I owned the whole of Scotland?” he asked sarcastically.
“There are times when it seems that way,” I couldn’t help replying.
After that he didn’t speak to me, except for a chilly “Good morning,” or “Good night.” I am not sure, but I think he and Mother quarreled over me. I felt uncomfortable and would have left, had it not been for the Falconers, who were expected in three weeks’ time.
They came in May, the loveliest time of the year in the Highlands. The beeches along the drive were in full leaf and the orchard a cloud of pink and white. Bluebells and deep-red wake-robins carpeted the valleys, and the fish rose readily to bait in the purling streams.
After hands were shaken, kisses exchanged, and a long line of boxes and trunks shown upstairs, we gathered in the drawing room over the tea urn, seed cake, and watercress sandwiches. Sabrina looked ravishing in a blue-striped day dress. I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
Across cups of steaming Earl Grey we smiled at each other. I thought of the weeks ahead and how we should spend them. In my mind I went over all the fascinating places I must show her: the Druid stones, the lake set close to the rim of a hill, the meadows where buttercups and daisies made a soft yellow-and-white carpet. I thought of the arm-in-arm walks we would take, the kisses we would steal under the drooping willows, the rides through the dim, piny forests. The summer stretched ahead, a promise of endless Eden.
Before dinner that night, Mother sent word saying she wanted to see me. I couldn’t imagine why but suspected it might concern Sabrina. When I came down to her room she greeted me rather curtly and invited me to have a chair. Though a little pale and much too thin, she seemed to have recovered from Adrian’s birth. Tonight, dressed in dove-gray silk and green velvet, she looked imperious, very much the Lady Montgomery.
“I’ve just had a talk with Uncle Miles,” she began. “He said he would prefer that you did not see Sabrina alone.”
“Hasn’t he said that before?”
“Not in so many words. He’s never been happy to have her going off with you unchaperoned. But now he seems quite adamant. He does not even want you to be in the same room with her unless there are others present.”
“Isn’t that a bit extreme?”
“I thought so.” She leaned forward. “You must have done something. Page, to make him take t
his hard line. What was it?”
“Nothing.” But I knew what had provoked Miles. The incident with Amanda. Seeing her emerge half-dressed from my room had given proof of my lechery (to say nothing of that unfortunate episode at Mrs. McAllister’s). I was not to be trusted with Sabrina. “I’ve done nothing.”
She studied my face thoughtfully. “Well, there it is, whatever the reason. I want you to promise you will abide by Uncle Miles’s request.”
“I can’t promise.” Her face shut down.
“Why don’t you ask me to cut off my arm!” I went on angrily. Getting to my feet, I walked to the window, stood there a moment, then came back, pausing in front of her. “You don’t seem to realize I love Sabrina. Do you know what that means?”
“Yes,” she said. “Contrary to your opinion, I do know what love means. I also know what patience and waiting means.”
“I am patient. I am waiting.”
How could I possibly tell her of my dreams, my plans, all of which were nothing without Sabrina.
“Perhaps it would be best to shorten your own visit, Page,” she suggested.
“You want me to go? To run?” My voice rose. “Not me. I’ll stay. And somehow I’ll manage to talk to Sabrina—alone.”
Her amber eyes, so like Uncle Miles’s, bored through me. “Whether I have your word or not, I expect you to respect Uncle Miles’s wish. I don’t believe in threats or blackmail. Page, but should you disobey, I’m afraid Ian will have no alternative but to ask you to leave.”
I went down to dinner in a black mood.
The Falconers planned to stay through the end of the grouse season in August. That gave me the whole summer—a challenge. How to circumvent Miles’s restrictive edict? Sabrina and I had a few snatched moments sitting in one corner of the crowded drawing room. She told me she still loved me. She also told me that she had been allowed to come only after promising not to go anywhere with me unless she took her brothers.
So take them we did. They must have been forewarned, for they stuck to us like watchful limpets, Christian smirking unpleasantly at everything I said.
I found it far less painful to join Sabrina at family outings. At these times the boys, relieved of their duties as watchdogs, would run off to collect birds’ eggs, catch butterflies, or whatever obnoxious boys did, leaving us in peace.
One Saturday both families were picnicking under some willows on the mossy banks of a stream which ran through a picturesque cupped valley. Ian, who rarely took a free day, had come with us. We ate at noon, a large meal of cold mutton, ham, chicken, eggs in their shells, barley bannocks, and an assortment of cakes, all washed down with quantities of frothing ale. Afterward, Ian and Miles moved upstream with their fishing tackle to try for a large trout reputed to dwell in a certain quiet, sunny pool.
As is usual on picnics, we had all eaten too much. The boys, tucking jam-filled scones into their pockets, had wandered off, and the baby slept peaceably in a wicker cradle under a tree. Carmella’s little girl sat weaving a daisy chain. There was some desultory halfhearted mention of a Roman ruin at the top of a hill, but no one seemed anxious to make the climb. I stretched out and listened to the women discussing bell-crown hats. (What else should they discuss? I remember asking myself. Certainly not the latest Reform Act, giving the franchise to the rurals. Invernean was as remote from London politics as the moon.) I fell asleep to their murmurings and awoke sometime later to silence. Everyone had gone off—probably to the Roman ruin— except the still-sleeping baby and Sabrina, who was sitting by the stream, dangling bare feet in the water.
Quietly I rose and tiptoed across the grass. I knelt down, placing my hands over her eyes.
She gave a small gasp. “Who is it?”
“Guess.”
She laughed.
I let go, turning her around. We gazed at one another, exchanging an unsmiling, serious, almost melancholy look, and then she was in my arms and I was kissing her, my mouth crushed to hers.
“Oh, Page,” she sighed, pullling away, and resting her head on my shoulder. “I wish we were old and all this terrible waiting and yearning was behind us.”
“I know, I know. It’s been hell for me. Seeing you every day, not being able to say what I feel, not being able to touch you.” I kissed her brow, then found her lips.
The baby mewed in its basket. Sabrina pushed me away and scrambled to her feet. “You mustn’t.” She bent and retrieved her straw hat. “They’ll be back at any moment.”
“Jailers! Torturers!”
She grimaced. “Page ...” There her face became earnest. “Did something happen at Wildoak, Page, something you ought to feel ashamed about?”
I met her look with a steady eye. “I did nothing there I would ever feel ashamed about.”
“If I thought you weren’t telling me the truth ...”
“You don’t think much of me, then. A fine thing.”
“But I do. I do!” She clasped my hands.
“Sabrina, isn’t there some way we could be together, even if it’s only for a half hour?”
“We’re together now.”
“On tenterhooks and out in the open. Listen, Sabrina, couldn’t you get away after everyone’s gone to bed? There’s a little room beneath the third staircase landing. They can’t possibly know.”
“I want to, Page, but it would be breaking a promise.”
“We’d do nothing but talk, I swear. I won’t even hold your hand. Cross my heart.”
Approaching from upstream we heard a man’s voice singing:
“Fling all your gates open and let me go free
See’t is up with the bonnets o' Bonnie Dundee.”
Sabrina quickly sat down and drew on her shoes and stockings.
“Say you’ll meet me,” I whispered.
She nodded her head in the affirmative.
Summer days in the Highlands are long, almost as long as those in the Scandinavian, countries. Darkness did not come until nearly midnight, but I was in the little room hours before that. Bare except for a nest of stacked Jacobean chairs, it smelled of dust and rat droppings. The room’s single window had been bricked up. I guessed that it had once been set in the castle tower’s outer wall and had looked down at the courtyard below. Only a draft coming in from under the door kept the claustrophobic air circulating.
Sitting down on one of the chairs, I placed my candle on another. I opened a book that I had picked at random, Hunting the Wild Red Deer in the Grampian. It was very dull. Time dragged. My ears alert for every sound, every tick or creak of the stairs, heard only the familiar rustling behind the walls. I closed the book and slumped in my chair. A moment later I got up, consulted the gold watch Mother had given me on my birthday, snapped the case to, and stuck it in my pocket.
I sat down once more and put my face in my hands, willing my wildly beating heart to slow its pace, my tense mind to calm itself. But that didn’t work. I was on my feet again, pacing, counting my steps, listening. Once or twice I went to the door, inching it open, peeping out.
An hour went by, two, but she did not come. She can’t get away, I thought, someone is keeping her, she’s taken ill, she’s fallen asleep. Gradually I ran out of excuses. At three o’clock I gave up. Dousing my candle, I crept down the corridor like a criminal, and paused before her door. I put my ear to it, but could hear nothing. Then I went up to bed.
The next day I managed to have a few whispered words with her. “I waited most of the night,” I said.
“I know. I’m sorry, Page. I got cold feet; I was afraid.”
Of what? Of Miles? Of me? Of herself? But she wouldn’t say.
Chapter 19
Early in August a stream of guests began to arrive for the grouse shoot. The spare rooms were filled to overflowing with hunters and their wives, their luggage and gear, their personal valets and maids, while the kennels resounded with the barking of their dogs. Although Mother had never been hostess to such a crowd, she took it all in stride. Extra leaves were put in
the long dining table, chairs brought down from the attic, silver polished, the larder and wine cellar restocked. The regular staff had to be augmented with extra help from the village causing friction between our people, who of course thought themselves superior, and the villagers, who quite resented this lordly attitude. Several times their disputes reached such loud and vituperative proportions that Mother was forced to arbitrate.
But these behind-the-scenes domestic spats were lost in the general babble, which centered around guns, dogs, and birds. The Twelfth (always capitalized) of August was the day of the opening, and the air of anticipation was so keen it hummed like a high wire. Ian came into his own. He loved the hunting season, having shot grouse with his father at Invernean from the time he was old enough to hold a rifle. The genial host, eyes flashing, he forgot our differences and offered me the use of a brace of guns, a loader, and a dog. I accepted. A man would have to be made of stone not to catch grouse fever, and I wasn’t made of stone—I was red-blooded Virginian, trained like Ian to hunt and eager to show my skill.
A bold brassy sun had just shown its face over a flushed horizon when dogs, loaders, and hunters converged toward the butts strung across the high moor. The butts, small blinds of piled-up turf spaced two gunshots apart, had been readied for our use a month earlier. My loader (who would reload one gun while I shot with another) and I positioned ourselves behind one of the blinds. At our feet lay the dog, its lead wrapped about the loader’s ankle, its haunches quivering, and its tongue lolling with excitement.
For a long while nothing on the moor could be heard except the buzz of bees in the heather, the distant baaing of sheep. Then, ever so faintly at first, but growing louder and louder, came the shouts of the beaters. Peeping over the edge, I saw them marching abreast across the skyline, yelling and waving white flags. I readied my gun, waiting. For what seemed an eternity nothing happened. Then, with an explosive rush of wings, hundreds of grouse flew upward, crying raucously. I began to shoot at once, emptying one gun, receiving the other from my loader, passing guns back and forth until both barrels grew hot in my hands.
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